Advanced VirtualBox Tips and Tricks
EVERYBODY LOVES A VIRTUAL MACHINE, don’t they? Whether you’re looking to try out an alternative operating system or want to resurrect an old version of Windows for compatibility purposes, VMs are the answer. And thanks to VirtualBox, the underlying technology powering that answer doesn’t cost you a single cent.
VirtualBox is pretty straightforward to use, and by now you’ve probably got a handful of VMs up and running to cover your various bases. But perhaps performance isn’t quite what you’d like it to be, or you’re wondering whether there are other uses for virtual machines you’ve not thought to explore. In this tutorial, we’re going to delve into some more advanced topics to make sure your virtual machine is performing at its best.
There’s stuff to speed up your VM’s performance, such as ensuring you’ve enabled hardware virtualization in the BIOS, plus tips and tricks for utilizing your hardware better, from setting up multiple displays to fine-tuning your VM’s network settings to give it just the right amount of access it needs. We’ll examine ways to resize your virtual disk images (as well as create images from physical drives) and introduce you to the command-line VBoxManage tool. Enough chitchat, it’s time to step your VirtualBox know-how up to the next level.
1 ENABLE VIRTUALIZATION
Most modern processors, whether Intel (VT-x) or AMD (AMD-V), support virtualization technology. This helps virtual machines tap directly into the hardware to help improve their performance, and only a fool would run VirtualBox without them. You can quickly verify that virtualization is both supported and enabled on your PC by right-clicking the Taskbar and choosing “Task Manager.” Switch to the “Performance” tab (click “More details” if necessary), and check the].
